Qizil (Red)

Dear Robert

Many thanks for the information!
I believe it is good for us here on Ushta to understand the religious traditions (and contemporary situation) in the Middle East better.
Are the Alevis in Turkey and the Alawis in Syria the same group? If so, I would expect some 15% of Syrian to be Alawi and hold many powerful positions in that country. Which in turn could explain the strong links politically between today's Syria on hand and the Shia government if Iran and Hizbollah in Lebanon on the other. What do you think?

Ushta
Alexander

2009/3/28

Dear Alexander,

again, a difficult question. First of all, who counts as Alevi?
Moreover, who counts himself as Alevi? We have groups, which are
counted as Alevis by the majority, but insist that they are not
(certain rural 'Bektashis' for example; Iranian Ahl-e Haqq, on the
other hand, claim that Anatolian Bektashis are a sub-group of
themselves). But let's keep that aside and look to those groups as
well the academic as the average Alevi functionary might consider as
Alevi:

The second problem in that case is that we do not have official census
data as the Alevis are not recognised as a distinct denomination,
especially in Turkey, where they are simply counted for as 'Müslüman'
or 'Islam'. (One exception was interwar Albania, where the Albanian
Bektashis were recognised as religious group with their own school
textbooks alongside with catholic and greek-orthodox Christians and
Sunni Muslims.)

But estimates for Turkey are 5--30 percent. Turkey's population: 71.5
mio / let's say 15 percent =
10.73 million
Migration diaspora in Europe, America etc. approximately
1.25 million (??)
Balkan Turkic subgroups (Bulgaria, Makedonia, Romania, Kosova, Greece)
0.5 million (??)
Iraq (Shabak and other designations), including other regional
subgroups (Qizilbash in Syria, Bektashis in Egypt ??)
0.25 million
Albania / Albanians
0.25 million ???

Total ca.: 13 million (just a rough estimate)

It is not clear what remains of Qizilbash religious traditions under a
Twelver Shiite surface (Republic of Azerbayjan, Iran). However, as the
very active Alevi organisations did not find counter-organisations or
at least some individuals there to cooperate with, there might not be.
However, I met an Iranian Qashqa'i in Estanbul who claimed that their
religion is the same. He was working for Alevis as a translator
(Persian-Turkish).

Best wishes,

Robert

Zitat von Alexander Bard :

> Dear Robert
>
> No problem, we take a very large and general view of Zoroastrianism here on
> the Ushta List. You've stayed very true to the aims of this forum indeed.
> Many of the western converts to Zoroastrianism are also Spinozists
> (believing that the strongly Sufism-isnpired Spinoza was a European
> Zarathushtra) so Spinozism is for example an issue that is also discussed
> here. I wonder if you have any serious estimate on how many Alevis there are
> in the world today?
>
> Ushta
> Alexander

The story of Sunpadh

Dear Robert
So would you say that this socialist tradition within Middle Eastern culture has Zoroastrian origin?
Did not this movement after all begin with Mazdak and all followers since are proto-Mazdakists in one form or the other? Would Baathism in Syria and Iraq and the strength of Iranian Marxism in the 1950s and 1960s be related to this movement?
Ushta
Alexander

2009/3/28
- Dölj citerad text -

Dear Alexander,

it is sometimes Abu-Muslim (among many other social revolutionaries /
'heretics') which Alevis refer to as their--at least
ideological--ancestors. But this is no evidence that there is a direct
line of transmission. This line of charismatic persons referred to
follows all such historical personage from Mazdak to Babak,
Abu-Muslim, Ali, Hoseyn, the twelve Emams or people connected to them,
Mansur-e Hallaj, Baba Ishaq, Shah Esmail up to Pir Sultan Abdal (16th
c Anatolia) (in concrete form I encountered in Qizilbash-Alevi
Anatolian houses portrait galleries which even included modern
20th-century Turkish/Kurdish revolutionaries and even Che Guevara).

Shortly said, it is not easy (if not impossible) to decide whether
there is an 'authentic' conncetion. For example, Soviet Aserbaidschan
made use of historiography of such figures (even including Zoroaster
himself) to construct a history of socialist revolution from early
times on in the region. This historiographies were recepted by people
on the other side of the 'Iron Curtain' (e. g. Turkish Kurds listening
to Soviet Kurdish radio programmes; books etc.).

Best wishes,

Robert

Zitat von Alexander Bard :

> Dear Friends
>
> The story of Sunpadh and his attempt to merge Islam with Zoroastrianism in
> the 9th century is quite stunning:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunpadh
> Do we know what happened with the followers of Sunpadh, and how have they
> influenced both Islam and Zoroastrianism?
>
> Ushta
> Alexander

Change, mobility, relativism and pragmatism

Exactly!!!
And THIS is the break that Zarathushtra is making with the nomadic tribal circular worldview of pre-Zoroastrianism.
My point has all along been that Zarathushtra never was a RELIGIOUS pioneer. Zoroastrianism as a religious practice existed long before Zarathushtra (although under a different label, of course) and changed very little during his lifetime. This is why Parviz Varjavand is completely right about "Mazdayasna" as far more than a Gathic enterprise.
But the PHILOSOPHICAL aspects of Zarathushtra's revolution were truly dramatic. Zarathushtra created the first philosophy and philosophical lifestyle in history which put change, mobility, pragmatism and relativism at the forefront (long before Daoism did the same in China and Heraklitus did the same in ancient Greece). This explains everything about The Gathas, making its message coherent, and about the culture that the arrival of The Gathas fostered (with Cyrus The Great etc).
As I've always said, Zarathushtra is both The Original Spinoza and The Original Lao Tze!
Ushta
Alexander

2009/3/12 Special Kain

Dear Alexander,

I believe that Zarathushtra was the first to come up with the concept of contingency and an indeterministic world. Before him, time was circular: everything was repeating itself over and over again, and will be doing so forever, with little to no variation. Zarathushtra introduced the concept of an open future to his and other tribes. If everything was repeating itself again and again, there would be no need for civilization, religious tolerance, equality between the sexes and ecological recycling. He was the first to say that time was linear, stressing the choices we could make in life. Without contingency, no freedom of choice.

Ushta,
Dino

--- Alexander Bard schrieb am Di, 10.3.2009:


Von: Alexander Bard
Betreff: [Ushta] Why freedom of choice is a better concept than freedom of will
An: Ushta@yahoogroups.com
Datum: Dienstag, 10. März 2009, 16:23

Dear Dino

I agree. Free will can really only exist in a strictly dualist environment. Because it requires for there to be something that wills in the first place (a soul isolated within and from the body). In addition, the concept of freedom is far from clear. Free from what? Free to do what? I prefer to emphasize that the world is indeterministic and that within an intedeterministic world no outcome can be totally determined. This open up the future to a multitude of possibilities and it is more meaningful for us to talk about an open future than to discuss any freedom of will. To Zarathushtra, the freedom of the will is of no concern whatsoever, Instead, his focus is on our (ethical) identity. He is concerned that we should understand that WE ARE the thoughts, the words and the actions that are bodies produce. It is merely as a feedback loop of those phenomena that Zarathushtra is concerned with an ethical "freedom" of sorts.

Ushta
Alexander

2009/3/10 special_kain

Dear friends,

To ask whether we have a free will or not is not the most sophisticated philosophical question, but it's important and getting more so in the light of brain research. Benjamin Libet's experiment allegedly proved that we can't want what we want, that decisions were taken subconsciously (or preconciously) and we only had the possibility to react and say "No!" (veto). Libet's experiment and theory became extremely popular amongst neuroscientists, evolutionary biologists and some philosophers, psychologists and sociologists. Fortunately, Libet's experiment didn't prove anything at all. Anyone interested in free to find the important and convincing methodological objections on the net.
But hasn't this debate been way too tiring? Of course, there's no free will in the sense that there was a totally unconditioned will: past experiences, socialization, cultural norms, biological and neurophysiological restrictions and other influencing factors do exist, for better or worse. But Zarathushtra's freedom of choice comes handy right here: there are restrictions, yet there's also contingency. And freedom of choice acknowledges the fact that restrictions and contingency exist. So there are options that we can choose from and other options that we can create for ourselves. Freedom of choice is a more pragmatic concept than freedom of will. Freedom of choice doesn't mean that there wasn't any free will - of course, there's self-control and there are more complex decisions to be made than grabbing an apple when being hungry! We can learn from our past experiences, we can use our (more or less) wise minds. So we can make free choices based on reasoning and past experience. We can create alternatives to those restrictions mentioned above (even though they'll continue to exist), widening our range of freedom.

My two cents on a Tuesday morning,
Dino

Freedom of choice vs Freedom of will

Dear Dino

I agree. Free will can really only exist in a strictly dualist environment. Because it requires for there to be something that wills in the first place (a soul isolated within and from the body). In addition, the concept of freedom is far from clear. Free from what? Free to do what? I prefer to emphasize that the world is indeterministic and that within an intedeterministic world no outcome can be totally determined. This open up the future to a multitude of possibilities and it is more meaningful for us to talk about an open future than to discuss any freedom of will. To Zarathushtra, the freedom of the will is of no concern whatsoever, Instead, his focus is on our (ethical) identity. He is concerned that we should understand that WE ARE the thoughts, the words and the actions that are bodies produce. It is merely as a feedback loop of those phenomena that Zarathushtra is concerned with an ethical "freedom" of sorts.

Ushta
Alexander

2009/3/10 special_kain

Dear friends,

To ask whether we have a free will or not is not the most sophisticated philosophical question, but it's important and getting more so in the light of brain research. Benjamin Libet's experiment allegedly proved that we can't want what we want, that decisions were taken subconsciously (or preconciously) and we only had the possibility to react and say "No!" (veto). Libet's experiment and theory became extremely popular amongst neuroscientists, evolutionary biologists and some philosophers, psychologists and sociologists. Fortunately, Libet's experiment didn't prove anything at all. Anyone interested in free to find the important and convincing methodological objections on the net.
But hasn't this debate been way too tiring? Of course, there's no free will in the sense that there was a totally unconditioned will: past experiences, socialization, cultural norms, biological and neurophysiological restrictions and other influencing factors do exist, for better or worse. But Zarathushtra's freedom of choice comes handy right here: there are restrictions, yet there's also contingency. And freedom of choice acknowledges the fact that restrictions and contingency exist. So there are options that we can choose from and other options that we can create for ourselves. Freedom of choice is a more pragmatic concept than freedom of will. Freedom of choice doesn't mean that there wasn't any free will - of course, there's self-control and there are more complex decisions to be made than grabbing an apple when being hungry! We can learn from our past experiences, we can use our (more or less) wise minds. So we can make free choices based on reasoning and past experience. We can create alternatives to those restrictions mentioned above (even though they'll continue to exist), widening our range of freedom.

My two cents on a Tuesday morning,
Dino

How does one define a religion? Part 3

Dear Jehan, Dina, Dino

Thank you for brilliant postings on this topic.
Zoroastrianism s nit only a philosophy, to the ancient Persians Zoroastrianism WAS philosophy itself. Therefore the label Mazdayasna (the celebration of wisdom).
This philosophy became a religion through customs and practices.
So the correct answer in moden English would be that Zoroastrianism is both philosophy and religion, and then we mean religion in its original sense (as religare).

Ushta
Alexander

2009/3/4 Jehan Bagli

Dear Friend:

In this discussion of Philosophy versus religion, I notice a major conventional parameter of 'customs and practices' is missing. I believe that all religions start as a philosophy, advocating a way of life, which Dina has so eloquently pointed out for Zarathushtrians. However as the belief in Divinity pervades though that way of life, with time, humankind makes effort to commune with the Divinity. This invariably results in the emergence of customs and rituals that transforms the philosophy to a religion. These customs ad practices also contribute to some degree, the binding within a community that Perviz referred to as 'Relegare'. Almost invariably all religions, institutionalized or otherwise, encompass some kind of individual or congregational ritual practices that philosophy does not. Unfortunately at times these the practices are so heavily enforced by the institutional infrastructural hierarchy that the philosophy implied in the religion is overshadowed and the some religions become a multi-level marketing industry. Zarathushtra's philosophical teaching of Spenta way of being was essentially overshadowed in the Sasanian era of Iranian history.

With Peace and Enlightenment from Mazda

Jehan Bagli

On 4-Mar-09, at 8:56 AM, DINAMCI@aol.com wrote:

> Dear Helen,
>
> That is a legitimate and difficult question to answer. The ancient Greeks did indeed consider Z's teachings to be a philosophy. Eudoxus (of Cnidus) who (dare I say this on Alexander's List!) was a disciple of Plato, is said to have thought it to be "the noblest and most useful of the schools of philosophy." (quoting from Prof. Humbach's book, Vol. 1, page 24).
>
> Philosophy means "love of wisdom". And mazdayasna means "worship of wisdom". And to Zarathushtra, worshipping means to think, speak and act in an ashavan way, with a foundation of love (Y51.22). So mazdayasna is indeed a love of wisdom.
>
> Today, the difference between a philosophy and a philosophical "religion" as I understand it is that the latter includes a belief in the Divine (thought not necessarily the conventional idea of "God") whereas the former does not. This distinction does not apply to Zarathushtra's teachings, however. Some of my Z friends (including a dear friend in London) are quite comfortable being followers of Zarathushtra who see Mazda as an allegory -- the idea of wisdom personified -- rather than a real life form. While I do not think this view accords with the evidence of the Gathas, it is certainly held by a number of Zoroastrians.
>
> As with so many labels, perhaps the distinctio n between "philosophy" and "religion" is an artificial one which we have created. As a species, we are very much given to categorizing, and classifying. But sometimes, such distinctions (like other labels for different thought systems) do not accurately reflect a given reality.
>
> Wishing us the best,
>
> Dina G. McIntyre.
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Helen Gerth
> To: Ushta@yahoogroups.com
> Sent: Tue, 3 Mar 2009 5:20 pm
> Subject: Re: [Ushta] Reply to Helen re How does one define a religion
>
> Dear Dina,
>
> How would one then distinguish it from 'philosophy'... religion of course includes a philosophy of a way of living...but philosophy is not always a religion...
>
> Obviously I have a particular thought in mind...hence the question to see if others see it the same way....or how it is different...
>
> Thank you!
>
> Peace and happiness always,
> Helen
>
> --- On Tue, 3/3/09, DINAMCI@aol.com wrote:
>
> From: DINAMCI@aol.com
> Subject: [Ushta] Reply to Helen re How does one define a religion
> To: Ushta@yahoogroups.com
> Date: Tuesday, March 3, 2009, 1:08 PM
>
> Dear Helen,
>
> If you want a definition in a nutshell, I would say that religion according to Zarathushtra means using your mind / heart to search for what is true and right, and think it, speak it, and do it in all the many and varied circumstances of your life. In other words, it is a beneficent way of living.
>
> Wishing us the best,
>
> Dina G. McIntyre.
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Helen Gerth
> To: Ushta
> Sent: Tue, 3 Mar 2009 3:16 pm
> Subject: [Ushta] How does one define a religion
>
> Dear all,
>
> What is the definition of a religion.... and20how does Zoroastrianism meet this definition?
>
> Up front I will say that I have no expectations. ..and I realize that there will be numerous different answers...
>
> Thank you for indulging me if you have time or interest...
>
> Ushta te,
> Helen

Religare

Dear Parviz

This is most enlightening!!!
This also shows that religion is a concept with Zoroastrian and not European roots since it arrived as part of Mithraic culture (the part of Zoroastrian history that you and I seem to love the most).
We should educate the world about this fact: Remove the concept of religion from Christianity and its Manichean roots and return the concept of religion to the world of Zoroastrianism and Mithraism.
Because if religion is that which ties human beings together, then religion is indeed a beautiful thing.

Ushta
Alexander

2009/3/4 Parviz Varjavand

Dear friends on Ushta,

I did go look up the word and it is spelled Religare (and not Relegare) in Latin.

I like to associate the word Religion with its Latin root Religare as it tells me a lot. In Zoroastrianism we have a ritual in which a bundle of twigs are tied together with a Koshti or a white woolen cord and this represent Hamazoori or strenght in union. Many cultures have this image, but I believe that the Persian Version as incorporated in Mazdayasna may be the oldest. The Mithraists have this ritual and they tie the Rods together with a red cord representing Love or Mehr (The Love aspect of Mithra).

Your friend and mine ;-) Benito Mussolini used this Barsam image to form the Italian Fascist party. (As the Coffe-net in Tehran is closing, I will post this now and continue it later)

Ushta,
Parviz varjavand

How does one define a religion? Part 2

Dear Helen and Friends
Dina's definition of religion is not the definition used academically.
Religion instead refers to a belief system based on a specific divinity or set of divinities. A foundation Dina illuminatingly has left out.
What Dina is referring to is what since the Greeks has been called "philosophy", "the admiration of knowledge".
But Dina's definition is interesting nevertheless, since Zoroastrianism is not a religion in the classic sense.
Which just goes to prove the post-colonial studies thesis that ALL belief systems prior to the Greeks have clumsily been referred to as "religions" to keep the European monopoly on the innovation of the discipline of "philosophy". This myth needs to be exposed and any serious acadmic would of course do precisely that.
Zoroastrianism is "a way of life", "a culture", "a belief system". For example, n my native tongue Swedish, the term religion is rarely used for a phenomenon like Zoroastrianism, the proper word is instead "livsåskådning", meaning "a way of looking at existence" (and I'm sorry if English is a poorer language than the Scandinavian tongues in this department).
Ushta
Alexander

2009/3/3 Helen Gerth

Dear Dina,

How would one then distinguish it from 'philosophy'... religion of course includes a philosophy of a way of living...but philosophy is not always a religion...

Obviously I have a particular thought in mind...hence the question to see if others see it the same way....or how it is different...

Thank you!

Peace and happiness always,
Helen

--- On Tue, 3/3/09, DINAMCI@aol.com wrote:

From: DINAMCI@aol.com
Subject: [Ushta] Reply to Helen re How does one define a religion
To: Ushta@yahoogroups.com
Date: Tuesday, March 3, 2009, 1:08 PM


Dear Helen,

If you want a definition in a nutshell, I would say that religion according to Zarathushtra means using your mind / heart to search for what is true and right, and think it, speak it, and do it in all the many and varied circumstances of your life. In other words, it is a beneficent way of living.

Wishing us the best,

Dina G. McIntyre.


-----Original Message-----
From: Helen Gerth
To: Ushta
Sent: Tue, 3 Mar 2009 3:16 pm
Subject: [Ushta] How does one define a religion

Dear all,

What is the definition of a religion.... and how does Zoroastrianism meet this definition?

Up front I will say that I have no expectations. ..and I realize that there will be numerous different answers...

Thank you for indulging me if you have time or interest...

Ushta te,
Helen